Dave and Aleisha were two struggling students trying to make it through university, despite the odds.

In difficult times, they found a way to get by, and when they met Jason Steba, the president of the peer counselling club at the University of Technology, they thought they had found some hope.

Both Dave, a second-year student and Aleisha in her final year, were having trouble coming up with their full tuition and Steba said he could. He told them there was a university fund from which they could get assistance.

They had both known him one way or another before the incident. Dave had known him from high school and Aleisha had met him before through a friend of hers who happened to be a relative of Steba.

"He (the friend) said he knew of this (financial assistance) and he is going to put me through to it," Aleisha recounted to The Sunday Gleaner.

'Legitimate'

"He told me that it is legit(imate) because the person who is dealing with it is his cousin and the person is also the president of the peer counselling association," she continued.

Believing all she was told, Aleisha went to the main office of the peer counsellors association which is close to the health department on campus.

"So, upstairs is where I went and he was occupying one of the offices of one of the counsellors. And there were other counsellors around and when I spoke to them about the whole thing, they said they were just thinking that he was just seeing students, he was counselling them," she related.

Richard had a similar start to his story. The university had just increased its tuition and the money he planned to pay as half payment for the semester, was no longer going to be enough.

"I was going to sit out the year, but I met him and we were talking about the situation and he suggested to me that the university had a fund which was set up to help students who were really in need," Richard recounted. "I asked him how it would work and he said that I would make an initial payment and then I could come in with the rest that I could afford and the remaining balance would be written off."

So Richard went to see Steba at his office. There were very long lines there, as scores of students were seeking financial assistance. Richard forked over $40,000 to him in the first semester and $50,000 in the second to finance his $138,000 tuition. Aleisha did the same. She gave Steba about $45,000 to finance her $95,000 tuition.

"I went there more than once because basically, what he had to do was to interview us. He told us to take our bank statements and he will see the amount that is there and how much he can help," she said.

Second interview

On the second interview, Steba relocated to the conference room.

"The door is closed, persons are outside waiting. That's how it was all set up. The school knew nothing about it and there were persons (staff) there who would see all these people around the place passing and didn't say anything. That gave me the feeling that everything was all right," she alleged.

"He asked me to put the money in a white envelope and said that I should sign the seal, and I signed and handed it to him," is what Dave said he did.

When school reopened Steba, the students said, took the bank voucher back to them with a National Commercial Bank stamp and told them to take it to the accounts department to get clearance. They both did that and they were cleared by UTech.

Things were going smoothly. Both Dave and Aleisha were attending classes and did their first-semester exams. Then only about a week and half ago, things started to turn upside down.

"They (accounts department) have been telling me that no money has been transferred from the bank for me. So I wassaying this isn't possible because I have my receipt and all of that," Dave related. "They said the stamp on the voucher was a fake and that the person was in jail," he continued in hushed tones, his voice reflecting the distress he felt upon hearing those words.

Fake stamp

"They said they found a lot of persons were coming in with receipts that have a fake stamp on them and there is no account number on the voucher."

Aleisha soon found that she was just another of those many students.

"A friend of a mine called me and told me about it, because they had seen it on the news."

Aleisha was distraught. It was her final year and this would mean she might have to wait another year. She started writing letters, one to her faculty and another to the administration. She went to the students affairs department to tell her story, but they refused to help her, telling her it was her own fault she had been scammed. Now she doesn't know what to do.

"I trusted the whole student counselling team that he was on; I trusted my friend and if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't give up my money like that," her voice beginning to crack.

- G.M.

Names changed to protect identity.